LRGB 3h50m total integration

Skywatcher Esprit 120

QHY 268 M

AP 1100GTO

Shot from near Alder Springs, CA, on 2016-09-04 with a Nikon D80 piggybacked on a Celestron Edge HD on a CGEM mount. Stack of 7 5 minute exposures at ISO 1600 and f/4.5 with a 70-300mm lens at 70 mm focal length. Stacked and processed in PixInsight. Final touches in PI and PS CS 5.1.

Aberkenfig, South Wales

Lat 51.542 N Long 3.593 W

Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Olympus E410 at prime focus. EQ6 Syntrek Mount.

36 frames used in final processing (12x60s, 14x50s & 10x40s all at ISO 800). Also 10 dark frames at 60s.

Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and final levels adjusted with G.I.M.P.

Although captured under what seemed to be cloudless sky, the seeing conditions and transparency were not at their best. The light pollution at my location is also presents a challenge. A fairly reasonable outcome with the equipment used.

The image displays some coma towards the edges. This is is one drawback of a parabolic f/4.8 Newtonian.

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.

The cluster is dominated by got blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be left over material from the formation of the cluster, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing.

Taken a year after my first attempt ( flic.kr/p/2e9R1Dq ) with some equipment and knowledge upgrades, I'm happy with the progress. This cluster is simple elegance in my eye and will never get old.

A total of 3.5 hours of exposure time using 140 90 second exposures.

astrob.in/xv1g4r/0/

IC5146 cocoon nebula,

Found in Cygnus among a giant dense star field - looking remarkably like it's name - a bundle of red emission nebula, reflection nebula and open star cluster, makes a great astrophotography target - i had trouble with a dslr approach, not getting any blue reflection nebulosity or the smoky dust - a lot of this was the strong light-pollution filters i had to use, but with the tiny sensor and RGB filters LP was less of an issue and the full nebula started to show through. I deliberately avoided any extra filters and stuck with just the clear/IR block for luminance and also avoided binning the colour data mostly because resizing is a hassle when stacking but i wanted as much quality as i could squeeze from the ancient low-res camera, even though the L-RGB image got very little detail from colour data it couldn't hurt to leave the 1x1 binning for the RG & B filter runs :) as for post-processing, it is still very rough and ready, mostly my poor handling of the data and inexperience with the LRGB approach - i'm pretty sure there is more to the image than i've been able to coax out and will likely go back and add more if i get chance. -

6 x 300s

4 x 600s - luminance

6x300s Red, blue and green

scope; ED80

CCD 16IC mono

Mount: EQ6

Guiding: 9x50mm finderguider / ASI120

EQASCOM, CDC , PHD2

Red rivals in Scorpius, with bright Mars above dimmer - and more yellow here — Antares below embedded in yellow reflection nebulas. The area is rife with colourful reflection and emission nebulas, making this one of the most colourfull regions of the deep sky. The hot blue stars of the head of Scorpius are at right.

This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute exposures with the 135mm telephoto lens at f/2.8 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. Some light clouds were moving in. They likely add the glow around Mars.

MESSIER 16, NGC 6611 - EAGLE NEBULA, STAR QUEEN NEBULA

Messier 16 is a conspicuous region of active star formation, appearing in the constellation Serpens Cauda. This giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust is commonly known as the Eagle Nebula, and has already created a cluster of young stars. The nebula is also referred to the Star Queen Nebula and as IC 4703; the cluster is NGC 6611.

The cluster was discovered by Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1745-1746, who made no mention of the nebula. Charles Messier independently rediscovered the cluster in 1764, and described its stars as "enmeshed in a faint glow", suggesting that he discovered the nebula as well.

The Eagle Nebula lies some 7,000 light years away in the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm of our galaxy - the next arm inward from us. At this distance, the cluster's angular diameter corresponds to a linear size of about 15 light years. The nebula extends much farther out, to dimensions of about 70 x 55 light years. M 16 might form one giant complex with M 17, the Omega Nebula, to the south in Sagittarius.

M 16's stellar swarm is only about 5.5 million years old, with its hottest, youngest stars of spectral type O6. Excited by high-energy ultraviolet radiation from these massive stars, this great cloud of interstellar gas glows by fluorescence.

RA: 18h 19m 57.2s

DEC: -13° 46’ 26.7“

Location: Serpens

Distance: 7,000 ly

Captured May 2018

Fiel Of view: 3.87 x 2.55 deg

Total acquisition time of 4 hours.

Technical Details

iTelescope T12

Data acquisition & processing: Nicolas ROLLAND

Location: Siding Spring Observatory, Australia

Ha 16 x 300sec

OIII 16 x 300sec

SII 16 x 300sec

Optics: Takahashi FSQ106 EDX3 @F/D 5.0

Mount: Paramount ME

CCD: FLI Microline 11002

Pre Processing: Pixinsight

Post Processing: Photoshop CC

Full resolution on Astrobin

Gum 14/15 Vela Complex (HOO)

Gum 14 (RCW27 or Ru64; the Pie) is a large emission nebula (left of image) which contains many types of objects; Emission, dark and reflection nebulae (NGC2626), an open cluster (NGC2671) and planetary nebulae too (PK259+00.1, PK260+00.1 and PK260+00.2)

The beatiful stawberry like object (bottom centre) is an HII region Gum15

On the right of couse we can see parts of the famous Vela SNR.

More details; astrob.in/mi88mc/0/

This peculiar portrait from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. NGC 1999 is around 1,350 light-years from Earth and lies near the Orion Nebula, the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. NGC 1999 itself is a relic of recent star formation – it is composed of debris left over from the formation of a newborn star.

Just like fog curling around a streetlamp, reflection nebulae like NGC 1999 shine by the light from an embedded source. In the case of NGC 1999, this source is the aforementioned newborn star V380 Orionis, which is visible at the center of this image. The most notable aspect of NGC 1999’s appearance, however, is the conspicuous hole in its center, which resembles an inky black keyhole of cosmic proportions.

This image was created from archival Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations that date from shortly after Servicing Mission 3A in 1999. At the time, astronomers believed that the dark patch in NGC 1999 was something called a Bok globule – a dense, cold cloud of gas, molecules, and cosmic dust that blots out background light. However, follow-up observations using a collection of telescopes, including ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, revealed that the dark patch is actually an empty region of space. The origin of this unexplained rift in the heart of NGC 1999 remains unknown.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, K. Noll

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-peers-at-m...

The Pleiades (M45), sometimes referred to as The Seven Sisters. Shown here is the blue reflection nebula which surrounds the stars along with integrated flux nebula. This is a combination of 30 x 3 minute exposures taken with my Canon 6D and Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS Lens.

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This is the bright blue reflection nebula, NGC 7023, aka the Iris Nebula, in Cepheus, amid a region of dark and faintly glowing clouds of interstellar dust. The bright red star at upper left is the variable star T Cephei. North is up in this framing.

This is a stack of 25 x 8-minute exposures through the Askar APO120 refractor at f/7 with the 1X Flattener, and with the filter-modified Canon R camera at ISO 1600. No filter was employed here.

Taken from home on a very clear night November 10, 2023. Autoguided with the MGEN III guider on the AP Mach 1 mount. Applications of luminosity masks from Lumenzia, a PhotoKemi Actions Nebula Filter action, and a Detail Extractor filter from Nik Collection 6 Color EFX (the latter two applied to a starless layer created with RC-Astro Star XTerminator) brought out the faint background nebulosity and dark nebulas in this dusty region of sky.

MESSIER 8, NGC 6523, NGC 6530 - LAGOON NEBULA AND CLUSTER

The Lagoon Nebula, Messier 8 (NGC 6523) is one of the finest star-forming regions in the sky, and is faintly visible to the naked eye. It is a giant glowing cloud of interstellar gas, divided by a dark lane of dust, containing a cluster of young stars (NGC 6530) that have formed from it.

The brightest parts of the Lagoon Nebula contain a feature known as the "Hourglass Nebula", discovered and named by John Herschel. This is in a region where vivid star formation is taking place, and its bright emission is caused by heavy excitation from very hot, young stars.

The nebula also contains a number of dark globules which represent collapsing clouds of protostellar material. The most prominent of these dark patches were catalogued by E. E. Barnard: B 88, a comet-shaped globule extended North-to-South in the nebula's eastern half; B 89, a smaller dark nebula near the cluster NGC 6530; and B 296, a long, narrow black patch at the nebula's south edge.

Properties and Cluster

The Lagoon Nebula lies in the heart of the galaxy's Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm, but its distance is a bit uncertain. Estimates range from 4,800 to 6,500 light years, with 5,200 quoted by many sources. A 2006 study found a distance of 4,100 light years, which would make its true size about 110 x 50 light years. The nebula probably has a depth comparable to its linear dimensions. The dark "Bok" globules of collapsing protostellar material have diameters of about 10,000 AU.

Hubble Space Telescope image of the "hourglass" structure at the center of M 8.

The western half of M 8 is primarily illuminated by the magnitude 5.97 star 9 Sagittarii, an extremely hot O5 star which radiates 44 times more high-energy ultraviolet than visual light. At visual wavelengths, 9 Sagittarii is 23,000 times brighter than our Sun! The illuminator of the "Hourglass" feature is the hot star Herschel 36 (mag 9.5, spectral class O7). In 2006, four Herbig-Haro objects were detected within the Hourglass, providing the first direct evidence of active star formation by accretion within it.

The hot O-type stars of the young open cluster NGC 6530 are fluorescing the eastern part of the nebula. As their light shows little reddening by interstellar matter, this cluster is probably situated just in front of the Lagoon Nebula. Its brightest star is a hot, mag 6.9 class O5 star, with an age around 2 million years. The cluster also contains one extremely hot, peculiar star of spectral type Of, with spectral lines of ionized Helium and Nitrogen.

Text source : Livesky.com

Technical Details

Data acquisition: Martin PUGH

Processing: Nicolas ROLLAND

Location: Yass, New South Whales, Australia

RGB: 1 x 900sec

Optics: FSQ106 EDX3 @F/D 5.0

Mount: Paramount ME II

CCD: QHY600 OSC

Pre Processing: CCDstack & Pixinsight

Post Processing: Photoshop CC

Full resolution on Astrobin

The constellation Orion also know as "the hunter" seen guarding the night sky over the house. Light pollution creates hues of red along the horizon as clouds diffused the light from the galaxy. I waited patiently for a stray Leonid meteor as earth rotated into the cosmic dust field from the annual shower. Unfortunately the shower was muted by the clouds, however, Orion was happy to make an appearance and i was happy to capture:-)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)

This frames the spectacular region of the Milky Way near the direction of the galactic centre in Sagittarius. At top is the pink (emission) and blue (reflection) nebula Messier 20, aka the Trifid Nebula. Below it is the large bright emission nebula, Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula. At bottom amid the rich star field of the Sagittarius Starcloud is the small dense black Ink Spot Nebula, Barnard 86, next to the small star cluster NGC 6520. The Starcloud is yellowed by absorption of blue wavelengths by intervening interstellar dust.

The fainter nebula complex to the east (left) of M8 is IC 4685, aka Sharpless 2-29. The very faint red patch at the right edge is Sharpless 2-22.

The field of view is about 8.2° x 5.5°.

Technical:

This is a stack of just 10 x 3 minute exposures with the Founder Optics Draco 62 astrograph with its fast f/4 Reducer lens, and the astro-modified Canon R camera at ISO 800. It was on the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi equatorial mount and autoguided with the ASIAir and ZWO guidescope and camera. Taken October 5, 2024 from the Quailway Cottage near Rodeo, New Mexico but just over the line in Arizona. The field was getting low in the southwest on an autumn night. So exposures were kept short for just 30 minutes in total.

A super wide angle shot of both The Pleiades and California Nebulae. The cloud band running through the centre of the image is the Perseus Molecular Cloud.

This exposure is only 1hr and 15mins worth of data, dawn stopped me getting more.

Shot at 116mm using the 70-200mm f/4L IS lens stopped down to f/5.6 and ISO3200.

Shot at Ilford NSW, Australia.

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Billions of stars...

Best viewed LARGE.

The image is not at full resolution, but is still best viewed LARGE. Zoom in and out by clicking on the image, or view in Lightbox Mode.

About this image:

A widefield mosaic of M8 and M20. This is a dense region of stars, interstellar dust clouds, and dark nebulae, reflection nebulae and emission nebulae.

The Trifid Nebula (M20)

The Trifid Nebula, a star-forming region in the Scutum spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Trifid Nebula (M20, Messier 20 or NGC 6514) is an H II region located in Sagittarius. Trifid means 'divided into three lobes'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars; an emission nebula (the red portion), a reflection nebula (the blue portion) and a dark nebula (the apparent 'gaps' within the emission nebula that cause the trifurcated appearance; these are also designated Barnard 85).

The Lagoon Nebula (M8)

The Lagoon Nebula (M8, Messier 8 or NGC 6523), a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. The Lagoon Nebula is estimated to be between 4000 - 6000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy, and is classified as an emission nebula.

Image Acquisition:

Sequence Generator Pro with the Mosaic and Framing Wizard.

Plate Solving:

Astrometry.net ANSVR Solver via SGP.

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop

Billions of stars...

The size, distance and age of the Universe is far beyond human comprehension. The known Universe is estimated to contain over One Billion Trillion stars (the latest estimates are substantially higher).

"Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home." - Carl Sagan - Cosmos.

Astrometry Info:

View the Annotated Sky Chart for this image.

Center RA, Dec: 270.970, -23.524

Center RA, hms: 18h 03m 52.787s

Center Dec, dms: -23° 31' 24.628"

Size: 3.68 x 2.39 deg

Radius: 2.192 deg

Pixel scale: 6.47 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: Up is 91.7 degrees E of N

View this image in the World Wide Telescope.

Martin

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Las Pléyades o Las siete hermanas (Messier 45 o M45) es un cúmulo estelar abierto que contiene estrellas calientes de tipo espectral B, de corta edad, ubicadas en la constelación de Tauro. Está entre los cúmulos estelares más cercanos a la Tierra, y es el cúmulo mejor visible a simple vista en el cielo nocturno. - The Pleiades or The Seven Sisters (Messier 45 or M45) is an open star cluster containing hot, young B-type stars located in the constellation Taurus. It is among the closest star clusters to Earth, and is the cluster best visible to the naked eye in the night sky.

Well the weather hasn’t improved in the UK since my last post and this is only the second image that I’ve managed since late September.

This image was bitch to process and I have been working on it on and off for over a week. To try and keep the noise down as much as possible and bring out the dark dust lanes I’ve added the red, green and blue data to my luminance to create what some call a “super luminance”, this is an idea I got from @Bogdan Borz.

I’m still not happy with the noise but this is about as good as I’m going to get without going to a dark site.

Object Description:-

M78, also known as NGC 2068, is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. This is a bright diffuse reflection nebula belonging to the Orion B molecular cloud complex and lies at a distance of about 1,350 light-years distant from Earth with a visual magnitude of 8.3.

EQUIPMENT:-

Telescope Meade 6000 115mm and AZ-EQ6 GT

ZWO ASI1600mm-Cool cmos camera

Orion Mini Auto Guide

ZWO RGB Filters

Chip Temp Cooled to -20 degC

IMAGING DETAILS:-

M78 (Orion)

Gain 139 (Unit Gain)

25 Red subs@180sec (1h 15min)

29 Green subs@180sec (1h 15min)

34 Blue subs@180sec (1h 15min)

48 Lum subs@60sec (48min)

+++Plus 75 Red, Green & Blue subs creating a Super Luminance

Total imaging Time 3h 45min

Dithering

20 Darks

No Flats

PROCESSING/GUIDING SOFTWARE:-

APT "Astro Photograph Tools"

DSS

PS CS2

Just weeks after NASA astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1999, the Hubble Heritage Project snapped this picture of NGC 1999, a nebula in the constellation Orion. The Heritage astronomers, in collaboration with scientists in Texas and Ireland, used Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) to obtain the color image. NGC 1999 is an example of a reflection nebula. Like fog around a street lamp, a reflection nebula shines only because the light from an imbedded source illuminates its dust; the nebula does not emit any visible light of its own. NGC 1999 lies close to the famous Orion Nebula, about 1,500 light-years from Earth, in a region of our Milky Way galaxy where new stars are being formed actively. NGC 1999 was discovered some two centuries ago by Sir William Herschel and his sister Caroline, and was cataloged later in the 19th century as object 1999 in the New General Catalogue. This data was collected in January 2000 by the Hubble Heritage Team with the collaboration of star-formation experts C. Robert O'Dell (Rice University), Thomas P. Ray (Dublin Institute for Advanced Study), and David Corcoran (University of Limerick).

NASA Media Usage Guidelines

Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STSci)

Image Number: PR00-10

Date Taken: January 21, 2000

Release Date: March 2, 2000

IC 5076

Credit: ESO/Dss2, Giuseppe Donatiello

IC 5076 is a beautiful and little known reflection nebula located a short distance from NGC 7000 (North America Nebula).

Probably it is precisely the bulky and popular neighbor that decrees the lack of attention.

We thus discover that the cloud is illuminated by the star HD 199478, a sixth magnitude class B blue supergiant (BlueSG). BlueSGs are very bright stars that are visible even millions of light years away. It is not said that the nebula is a legacy of its formation and, presumably, the two objects have just crossed along their orbits in the Milky Way, similar to the Pleiades crossing a molecular cloud.

This is a reprocessing of one of the older Hubble Heritage releases. I believe that when it was originally processed that the individuals responsible did the best they could with the tools they had. Better software and faster computing allow me to improve significantly upon the original, which was created in 1999.

This object lies along the Milky Way's dusty plane in the constellation Monoceros. One of my favorite things about this kind of nebula is that it reminds us that there can be a lot unseen in space. An optical illusion is produced by human intuition: it may look to you as though this is a bright cloud against a dark surface. In reality, this is a small hole in a largely unseen cloud which allows for light from a newly forming star to shine through.

The variation in the nebula is most likely caused by shadows being cast by blobs of dust accreting near the young star. Note that the accretion process and the star itself are impossible to see in this image, and they occur at a scale too small and too distant for Hubble to see in any detail. The presence of the dusty knots and their close proximity to the star can be inferred by the shadows they cast and how fast they move across the nebula. Because the nebula is around a light year in size, the shadows appear to flow outward, which demonstrates to us the speed of light (or the speed of darkness?) in a way that I find profoundly beautiful. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the telescope could observe this object many more times so we could watch the light flow lazily through the Universe?

I found a ground-based animation of the nebula's variation here: www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/science/astronomy/cbrown/imagi...

Some more information and the original news release is here:

hubblesite.org/image/904/news_release/1999-35

An APOD is here:

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap991020.html

Data collected for Proposal 5574 made this image possible.

WF/PC2 Cycle 4: Polarization Proposal

Red: F814W;POLQ

Green: F675W;POLQ

Blue: F555W;POLQ

North is 120° clockwise from up.

I already was all too happy to bring out the reflection nebulae in M45 for the first time recently, after a long period with lousy weather. Then good luck struck twice, allowing me to double my exposure time, and also to reduce the walking noise in the stacked image I experienced the first time by some manual DEC dithering fun. Quite some work, but the things you do for pretty pictures... (on top of freezing and lack of sleep of course, heh).

Indeed spending that extra work gave a huge boost to the final image quality, and I also think I hit the spot better with post-processing this time around.

So what you see here are a total of 2.5 hours of exposure with the TAIR 3S (@ f/5,6) over two nights, after discarding some subs that suffered from either tracking errors or gusts of wind (but with overall good success rate).

EXIF:

Camera: Samsung NX 30 (unmodified)

Lens: TAIR-3S 300 mm f/4,5 (stopped down to f/5.6)

Exposure: 300 x 30 s @ ISO 3200

Processing: stacking with Deep Sky Stacker, initial processing with Fitswork, touch-up and cosmetics with Aurora HDR 2018 and Luminar 2018.

This Hubble image captures a portion of the reflection nebula IC 2631 that contains a protostar, the hot, dense core of a forming star that is accumulating gas and dust. Eventually the protostar may gravitationally gather enough matter to begin nuclear fusion and emit its own energy and starlight.

Reflection nebulae are clouds of gas and dust that reflect the light from nearby stars. The starlight scatters through the gas and dust like a flashlight beam shining on mist in the dark and illuminates it. Because of the way light scatters when it hits the fine dust of the interstellar medium, these nebulae are often bluish in color.

Hubble observed this nebula while looking for disks of gas and dust around young stars. Such disks are left over from the formation of the star and may eventually form planets.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Merry Christmas with a beautiful nebula from the "Christmas Tree Cluster", located in the constellation of the Unicorn. Yes, I know. It's too good to make this stuff up!

A HaRGB image of the Fox Fur Nebula, located in Monoceros, and included in the NGC 2264 Region (also know as Sharpless 273).

This enigmatic formation of gas and dust lies in the constellation of Monoceros (the Unicorn) not far off the right arm of Orion. This is a small section of a much larger complex, generally known as the Christmas Tree cluster. The Cone Nebula is also a part of this same cloud.

The red regions of this nebula are caused by Hydrogen gas that is excited by the ultraviolet radiation from the hot, blue stars of the nearby star cluster. The blue areas are mainly dust clouds that reflect the bluish light of the same stars.

About the Star Colors:

You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.

Imaging:

RGB and Hydrogen Alpha Narrowband.

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

Annotated Sky Chart for this image.

RA, Dec) center: (100.247801531, 9.89872913403) degrees

Orientation: 0.407000441207 deg E of N

Pixel scale: 1.49337555522 arcsec/pixel

View this image in the World Wide Telescope.

Martin

-

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I finally felt like I developed some of the skills I needed to try putting together this mosaic that I shot nearly 4 years ago. I had done the two areas separately, but I was having a lot of trouble getting levels of light even between them. The Orion Nebula (at the bottom) is significantly brighter than the Running Man Nebula (above it). There's also the subtlety of all the dust around this region, too. Balancing it all took several efforts, but overall this one came out OK.

3 panel mosaic shot from Death Valley on 2016-12-27; Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar; Atik 314L+ color CCD camera; unguided; preprocessing in Nebulosity, compositing and processing in PixInsight, final touches in Photoshop.

The image spans 44' x 100'.

My most recent version of this object is at flic.kr/p/21QW7Tv

Data from 2013-01-04; stack of 11 305s exposures taken with a Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with HyperStar and Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing and stacking in Nebulosity; processing in PixInsight; final processing in PS CS 5.1

What happens when you mix a cluster of hot B7 spectral class stars and a good deal of interstellar dust? You scatter quite a bit of blue light, as is going on here in the Pleiades. In particular, the star closest to the center in this portion of M45 is Maia. To its south is Merope, which usually gets all the attention for its reflection nebula. However, with the field of view in my setup, I can get more nebulosity if I aim toward Maia instead.

This is a stack of 13 2 minute unguided exposures taken on 2016-09-04 from Alder Springs, CA. This was with a 9.25" Celestron Edge HD at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing in Nebulosity, and stacking and initial processing in PixInsight. Final processing in PS CS 5.1.

This is the region of the Milky Way that extends from southern Cygnus at top down into Vulpecula and Sagitta at bottom. Below centre is the Coathanger asterism, aka Brocchi's Cluster or Cr399. Above it is blue reflection nebula that does not appear to have a number from any of the usual catalogues.. The magenta emission nebula above and to the left is NGC 6820. A small red nebula above it is Sharpless 2-88. The bright star at upper right is Albireo in Cygnus.

The field is about 15° by 10°.

This is a stack of 9 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens at f/2.2 and red-sensitive Canon Ra at ISO 800, on the Star Adventurer tracker but unguided. Taken from home on a very clear night, Sept 9/10, 2023. The lens was equipped with an URTH broadband light pollution reduction filter to help suppress sky glow and increase contrast.

When I first got into astrophotography, galaxies were what I was most interested in imaging. I quickly realized that to image most galaxies well (except for the few large ones like M31 and M33), I needed a long focal length lens and accompanying highly accurate tracking. My budget didn't allow for that, so I adjusted my aspirations and focused on widefield shots with a simple tracker. Still, I love a good galaxy picture and anticipate stepping up to more sophisticated equipment someday.

I turned my back on Orion last night (it was difficult) and shot north again for the first time in awhile. I didn't have high expectations for what I'd get from imaging Galaxy IC 342 with a 135mm lens. I'm guessing somebody has tried it, but I couldn't find any examples online.

I'm happier than anticipated with this image. Although small, there is a good variety of objects in this extent; in addition to IC 342, it contains 1) the yellow reflection nebula around star BE Camelopardalis in the center, 2) a dark nebula on the left (I think IREC 193), 3) star cluster NGC 1502 in the upper left, and 4) the asterism Kemble's Cascade below NGC 1502 (although it's difficult to distinguish among the surrounding smaller stars).

Here's a thorough report about the reflection nebula around star BE Cam that clued me into its existence: www.sternwarte-baerenstein.de/upload/be-cam_reflection_ne.... Also an excellent APOD of IC 342: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170708.html

I'm looking forward to doing some more widefield galaxy shots this spring.

Acquisition details: Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC @ f2.0, ISO 1600, 56 x 60 sec, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking with DeepSkyStacker, editing with Astro Pixel Processor and GIMP, taken on Feb. 19, 2020 under Bortle 3/4 skies. I've cropped it but not extensively.

The Horsehead Nebula (B33) at bottom, below the star Zeta Orionis (aka Alnitak, the left star of Orionâs Belt), plus NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula, above Zeta. The field includes Messier 78 at upper left, a reflection nebula crossed by lanes of dark nebulosity, plus the smaller NGC 2071 above the main M78 nebula.

This is a stack of 12 x 6 minute exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 800 through the TMB 92mm apo refractor at f/4.4 with the Borg. 0.85x field flattener/reducer. Taken from New Mexico, Nov 17, 2014.

IC4603, the blue reflection nebula in Ophiuchus, surrounded by interstellar dust clouds and part of the very colourful Rho Ophiuchus complex.

2.5 hours each of L,R,G and B

10 hours total

Taken with:

Moravian G3-11000

GSO 10" f6 Richey Chretien telescope

Baader LRGB Filters.

Shortlisted in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2019.

This is a two pane mosaic stretching from Libra to Sagittarius, captured from Barronal beach in Cabo de Gata, Spain. The bright yellow/gold 'star' on the right is Saturn in all it's glory.

I've always loved this area of the sky, it has almost anything you care to name. In this image you can see emission nebula, reflection nebula, dark nebula, globular clusters, open clusters, millions of individual stars, a planet, and a section of our home galaxy!

Canon 60Da

35mm Samyang at f/2.8

Astronomik CLS EOS Clip Filter

AstroTrac TT320X-AG (no guiding)

45x 120 second exposures per pane

Integration time: 90 minutes per pane

ISO 1600

Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, stitched in Microsoft ICE and processed in Photoshop. Taken in Cabo de Gata National Park in Spain, May 2014.

Per pane:

35x 120s lights

35 darks

35 flats

35 dark flats

35 bias frames

Objects visible in the image:

M4 (NGC 6121), M20 (NGC 6514), M8 (NGC 6523), M21 (NGC 6531), M17 (NGC 6618), M16 (NGC 6611), M23 (NGC 6494), M25 (IC 4725), NGC 6604

NGC 5367 is a young open star cluster located in the constellation Centaurus. It lies at a distance of approximately 3,000 light-years from Earth. This cluster is relatively young, with an estimated 1-2 million years of age.

NGC 5367 is notable for its rich population of young, hot stars, which are responsible for illuminating the surrounding nebula. The cluster is embedded within a diffuse emission nebula known as the NGC 5367 Nebula or Caldwell 46. This nebula is characterized by its glowing gas and dust, which is ionized by the intense radiation emitted by the young stars within the cluster.

The NGC 5367 cluster and its associated nebula provide an excellent laboratory for studying the star formation processes and the interaction between newly formed stars and the surrounding interstellar medium. It is a popular target for amateur astronomers and astrophotographers due to its striking appearance and relative accessibility in the southern skies.

I always like looking for hidden gems in the data set I collected. In the lower left, just above the signature there are a few interesting objects. The standout for me is pgc184310. I think it looks like a Ring Galaxy, and I really love Ring Galaxies. They are so cool.

The following hyperlink gives a little more information. It's small with an angular size of 0.270 X 0.232 (arcmin).

simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=pgc184310&...

Instruments:

Telescope: 10" Ritchey-Chrétien RCOS

Camera: SBIG STL-11000 Mono

Mount: Astro-Physics AP-900

Focal Length: 2310.00 mm

Pixel size: 9.00 um

Resolution: 0.82 arcsec/pix

Exposure Details:

Lum 48X600

Red 16X450 Binned 2

Green 16X450 Binned 2

Blue 16X450 Binned 2

Total Exposure: 14 hours

Thanks for looking

Stars are born from clouds of gas and dust that collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses, a dense, hot core forms and begins gathering dust and gas, creating an object called a “protostar.”

This Hubble infrared image captures a protostar designated J1672835.29-763111.64 in the reflection nebula IC 2631, part of the Chamaeleon star-forming region in the southern constellation Chamaeleon. Protostars shine with the heat energy released by clouds contracting around them and the accumulation of material from the nearby gas and dust. Eventually enough material collects, and the core of a protostar becomes hot and dense enough for nuclear fusion to begin, and the transformation into a star is complete. The leftover gas and dust can become planets, asteroids, comets, or remain as dust.

This image is part of a Hubble survey targeting 312 protostars within molecular clouds previously identified with the Spitzer and Herschel infrared space observatories. Protostars are visible primarily in infrared light since they emit a lot of heat energy, and their visible light is obscured by the dust around them. Hubble’s advanced infrared capabilities could better resolve the protostars and examine their structure, including the accumulating gas and dust and faint companion objects.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and T. Megeath (University of Toledo); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Most astronomers know M42, the Orion Nebula that has 4 bright O class stars - the Trapezium. It’s thought there were originally 6 stars there- 2 were thrown out by gravity and travelled in opposite directions. One of these 2 runaways is the star AE Auriga. It’s currently passing through a dust and hydrogen cloud and illuminating both. The dust clouds reflect the blue light of the giant O class star and the hydrogen gas fluoresces red. The nebula is known as the Flaming Star nebula.

480/80mm f/6 Altair Starwave refractor. Altair Planostar FF.

Astro-modified Canon 80D at ISO400, IDAS clip-in LPS D2 filter, 34 x 5 minute subs.

NEQ6 pro mount with Rowan belt drives -2 star align.

Mini-PC with WiFi

Mount WiFi control with ASCOM/AstroPhotography Tool

Camera WiFi control with Backyard EOS

42 dark frames

40 flat frames (electroluminescent panel @ 1/40s)

Master bias from library.

Post processed in PixInsight 1.8 and Photoshop

Local parameters:

Temp: 3.2- 3.7c

Humidity: 84- 91%

Pressure: 1011 kPa

Camera Sensor Temp: 10-13c

Light Pollution and Weather:

SQM (L) at start of session (2108 hrs UT) =19.85 mag/arcsec2.

SQM (L) at end of session (0043 hrs UT) = 20.11 mag/arcsec2.

Clear, very occasional cloud. Some smoke from neighbour's chimney!

Polar Alignment:

QHY Polemaster alignment -

Error measured by PHD2=0 .8 arc minute.

RA drift + 1.64 arcsec/min

Dec drift -0.20 arcsec/min

Guiding:

PHD2 guiding with ZWO ASI290mm/Altair Starwave 206/50mm guider. Dithered.

RA RMS error 0.75 arcsec, peak error 2.66 arcsec

Dec RMS error 0.52 arcsec, peak error 2.17 arcsec

Astrometry:

Center (RA): 05h 15m 56.380s

Center (Dec): +34° 23' 41.347"

Size: 1.18 x 1.07 deg

Pixel scale: 1.59 arcsec/pixel

I’ve always had a problem with my scope - bright stars have been shaped like an “iron cross”. Initially I wondered if it was related to a rectangular LPS filter but changing to a round filter didn’t help. Some articles suggested it could be a diffraction problem from clips holding baffles or spacers in but I couldn’t see any. The solution to that problem is to stop the scope down but that would make it slower than f/6.

I recently found an article suggesting it was “pinched optics” - where the screws holding the lenses in are too tight and distort the optics. It’s commonly seen with reflectors, where the mirror is held by 3 screws giving a triangular diffraction pattern.

On looking at my scope, there were 4 sets of screws holding the lens elements in place. I have gently loosened these and the “pinched” effect has gone away but I’ve developed an eccentric halo artefact now that is worse towards the edge of the chip. This might be from my new D2 Clip-in LPS filter - I can replace this with a 2 inch filter that screws into the front end of my focal flattener.

Edited NOIRLab image of protostars and dust.

Original caption: The two young, low-mass proto-stars HR 5999 and HR 6000 illuminate nearby dust, creating the reflection nebula Bernes 149. These stars grew out of the dusty dark cloud of Lupus 3, part of a larger complex of as many as nine dark clouds.

A last chance to photograph this magnificent bouquet of stars which is slowly migrating West.

Composite of 54 exposures, 60s each, in RGB with a 127mm refractor F/D=7.5.

Site: Aix en Provence. Some small vibrations of the scope due to windy conditions.

IC4601, sometimes called the Horse's Ear due to it's position within the Blue Horsehead Nebula (IC4592), is a beautiful blue and yellow reflection nebula, 420 light years away in Scorpius. The blue reflection nebula is illuminated by three blue supergiant stars HD147101 and the binary system HD 147013, while the yellow reflection nebula is created by the yellow star HD 146834.

Exposures: L,R,G,B = 60 , 170, 170, 170 minutes (9.5 hours total)

Telescope: GSO RC10 at f6 with Astrophysics 0.75x reducer.

Camera; Moravian G3-11000

NGC7023 IRIS Nebula in Cepheus

80ED / 350D / EQ5

18 X 1m subs no calibration DSS / Ps

Quick tests as the weather clears.

The Trifid Nebula (M20, Messier 20 or NGC 6514) is a star-forming region in the Scutum spiral arm of the Milky Way (about 5,000 light-years away). It is a HII region located in Sagittarius. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764.

Trifid means "divided into three lobes". The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the red portion), a reflection nebula (the blue portion) and a dark nebula (the apparent "gaps" within the emission nebula that cause the trifurcated appearance, also designated as Barnard 85).

About this image:

Short 60 sec. high ISO (un-guided) exposures, imaged in the rural dark skies of the Free State Province, South Africa.

Star Colors:

You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.

Gear:

GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.

Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.

Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.

Celestron AVX Mount.

Celestron StarSense.

Canon 60Da DSLR.

Lights/Subs: 30 x 60 sec. ISO 6400 RAW exposures (un-guided).

Calibration Frames:

50 x Bias

20 x Darks

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight, and finished in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1115220#annotated

RA, Dec center: 270.911007598, -23.203605019 degrees

Orientation: 0.935916459239 deg E of N

Pixel scale: 5.39801408172 arcsec/pixel

Martin

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I think this is one of the most beautiful constellations in the sky. Looking like colourful diamonds on a string, the stars in Corona Australis shine brightly in our southern skies. This shows the huge dust cloud extending up from Corona Australis. This thing is HUGE!

This 3 hour exposure is made up of 60 x 3 minute exposures using the Canon 6D and 70-200mm f/4L IS. Shot at 200mm at f/5.6 and ISO3200.

Shot at Bretti in NSW, Australia.

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Within a galaxy hosting around 300 billion stars, here the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a mere handful or two — just about enough to form a single football team. These stellar “teammates” play under the banner of NGC 1333, the cloud of gas and dust that formed them and that they continue to call home.

NGC 1333 is located about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus (the Hero). The cool gas and dust concentrated in this region is generating new stars whose light is then reflecting off the surrounding material, lighting it up and making this object’s lingering presence known to us. NGC 1333 is accordingly classified as a reflection nebula.

This image shows just a single region of NGC 1333. Hubble has imaged NGC 1333 more widely before, revealing that the smattering of stars seen here has ample company. Seen in a broader context, this team of stars is but one gathering among many in NGC 1333’s celestial “Champions League.”

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/hubble-touts-a-te...

Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Stapelfeldt

This is the reflection nebula called the Witch Head Nebula, but officially IC 2118 (also NGC 1909), near the very bright star Rigel, at lower left in Orion. But the nebula is over the border in Eridanus the River. Hot blue-white Rigel is the source of illumination lighting this dusty nebula. Some faint red emission nebulosity populates the field in Orion.

This is a stack of 29 x 6-minute exposures through the Astro-Tech AT90CFT refractor with its 0.8x Reducer for f/4.8, and with the filter-modified Canon R camera at ISO 800. No filter was employed here.

Taken from home on a very clear night November 17/18, 2023, though with the field getting low in the southwest for the final frames in the set. Autoguided with the MGEN3 guider on the AP Mach 1 mount. Applications of luminosity masks from Lumenzia, a PhotoKemi Nebula Filter action, a Detail Extractor filter from the Nik Collection 6 Color EFX, and a mild glow enhancement with a Radiant Photo filter (the latter two applied to a starless layer created with RC-Astro Star XTerminator) brought out the nebulosity in this rich region of sky.

Being so bright, Rigel is creating some glow and flaring in the optics. I should also have aimed the scope a little lower to compose the scene with Rigel and the Witch Head a little higher in the frame.

Illuminated by the light of nearby stars, the nebula M-78 exhibits a ghostly appearance in this 10-minute exposure taken with a 6" refractor at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Located in the constellation of Orion -- some1,600 light years from Earth -- this reflection nebula is known to contain more than 40 very young stars still in the process of formation.

Image credit: NASA/MSFC/MEO/Bill Cooke

Original image:

www.nasa.gov/watchtheskies/stellar_nursery.html

View our Fireballs and Meteors photoset in Flickr:

www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157607380035209/

_____________________________________________

These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...

This is a deep space photograph of NGC 2264, the Christmas Tree Cluster and Cone Nebula, some of the lovely night sky jewels in our Milky Way. Inside NGC 2264 is Sh2-273 the Fox Fur Nebula—which is the bright, blue nebula at the center of the image along with some intermingling nebulosity—which, now that I have been able to appreciate it more with this photograph, quickly became one of my favorite objects in space.

This is a second version of this photograph, meant to share some of the lovely objects in this nebulous region without needing to zoom in. This also orients the Christmas Tree Cluster—shown center to the right of the bright blue nebula and ending above at the round nebula which looks like Pac-Man chomping upward—in a way that may be easier to see.

Original Photograph With Wider View

www.flickr.com/photos/jamespeirce/54417032292

I’ve wanted to photograph this region for a while now with the idea of making a fun family Christmas card. Maybe even doing something seasonally themed with narrowband images and colorful RGB stars. And then probably never sending a Christmas card out again. That ambition got kicked down the road year after year for a while. Around the time NGC 2264 starts climbing in my skies temperatures are starting to drop well below freezing and weather become rather consistently cloudy and gloomy. Then the holidays come and go. And then, when I do have an opportunity coming out of winter, I’m usually after one of the other amazing winter targets.

This year, though, I decided to buck the trend, and spent some time on NGC 2264 over a couple clear nights coming out of winter. I’m glad I did! Some aspects of this nebula ended up being much more amazing than I anticipated, and the Fox Fur Nebula, and region around it, in particular, earned its place as one of my favorite objects in space, and this ended up being one of my favorite photographs.

This photograph of NGC 2264 was taken over three nights—one in 2022 and two in February of 2025—in Skull Valley, Utah. I used my Epsilon Takahashi 180D telescope for color images used to create this image and incorporated some narrowband (photographing specific wavelengths of light, much as the Hubble Space Telescope does) which I photographed with my Takahashi FS-60CB (0.72x Reducer) and my Takahashi FCT-65D (0.65x Reducer) (one night in 2022 and the other in 2025, with the later telescope upgrading the former). Images were stacked together and edited in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop.

For more editing notes and other technical details see my website link below.

Equipment Used

Takahashi FS-60CB (0.72x Reducer)

Takahashi FCT-65D (0.65x Reducer)

- ZWO ASI2600MM Pro

- Astronomik MaxFR Hα & OIII

- Rainbow Astro RST 135E

- ZWO ASIAir Plus

Takahashi ε180D (1.5x Extender)

- ZWO ASI2600MC Pro Duo

- ZWO AM5

- ZWO ASIAir Plus

For more information about NGC 2264, other photographs, information about how this was photographed, editing notes, see:

mypetstars.com/astrophotography/NGC2264

Creative Commons License

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED

Attribute to James Peirce

Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC @ f2.0, ISO 1600, 38 x 60 sec, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking with DeepSkyStacker, editing with Astro Pixel Processor and GIMP, taken just before astronomic dawn on Oct. 2, 2019 under Bortle 3/4 skies.

Inclusion of LBN 777, the Baby Eagle or Vulture Head Nebula, on the left, was a happy accident.

We can see nebulae clearer than before. Whitish reflection nebula, Witch Head Nebula got far clearer in full length near the center.

Strait dark filaments got less visible on this version. It means that we could recognize them with existence of small stars.

In general, we can recognize something with absence of something. For example, our retinal cells, more especially cone cells have almost no sensibility at wavelength of hydrogen-alpha light, but we can feel existence of the vast hydrogen-alpha emission, Gum nebula as area of fewer stars as below:

Gum Nebula with Sigma 35mmF1.4 December 2014 Colorless Version: www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/16311565540

We could not recognize fine dark filaments on this starless version, which was clearly visible before starless conversion as below.

Orion and Surroundings HII OIII Enhanced December 2025:

www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/54330118548

*We may be able to detect those faint and fine dark filaments as less star areas after mapping of star population density with fine tiles.*

Exposure: 12 times x 1,800 seconds, 10 x 900 sec, 11 x 240 sec, and 20 x 60 seconds at ISO 6,400 and f/3.5 with NB12 Filter and 18 times x 900 seconds, 10 x 240 sec, and 17 x 60 seconds at ISO 1,600 and f/3.5 with Clear Filter

site: 2,434m above sea level at lat. 24 39 52 south and long. 70 16 11 west near Cerro Armazones in Sierra Vicuña Mackenna in Coast Range of Chile

Ambient temperature was 11 degrees Celsius or 52 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind was mild. Sky was dark, and SQML was 21.69 at the night.

A tricky scene to capture, especially on a badly set-up Newtonian. Please excuse the poor diffraction spikes.

120*3min OSC data with a Neodymium filter, processed like nobody's in PI with a fake SHORGB palette (NB channels extracted with the DBextract script).

I'm particularly pleased to have got Ced-4a, a tiny yellow blob of nebulosity in the middle of the two obvious IC59 + IC63 nebulae.